Super cheap electronic parts website

Here’s my geek bargain of the week: DealExtreme.com is a great place to buy those little electronic bits you want or need.

Since my laptop’s sound chip is dead, I bought a USB sound card for…wait for it…$2.26. And it works! And best of all, I bought the one item for less than $3 and THERE’S NO CHARGE FOR SHIPPING.

How do they do it? Well, you can’t use a credit card. You must use your PayPal.com account. That’s how they avoid hefty credit card fees and sell you cheap stuff cheaply.

Other great deals include a USB Bluetooth adapter (to hook up a wireless keyboard or mouse to your old computer; or connect your phone to a PC to transfer files) for $1.98, an iPod charging/data cable for $1.98 (and who doesn’t need an extra five or six of those?), an iPhone car charger for $4.68 … and click the “$2 Gadgets” tab for a few dozen items between 78 cents and $2.99 (OK … so they’re not all $2, but they are all cheap).

DealExtreme ships from Hong Kong, and the last item I ordered took about a week and a half to get here. But to only pay $2.26, with no shipping, I’m more than willing to wait.

Note to readers: always check a website’s return policy and if there is a working customer service number before you buy. Credit cards provide built-in purchase protection that PayPal lacks. Just something to keep in mind.

Comments

Keep us posted on how long this device lasts. I’ve used some of these discount electronics sites in the past and while the price is great and it works in the beginning, it sometimes has a short life because they use cheap components within. Keep us posted.

The thing I got was a USB sound module. Since my laptop’s sound has been dead for some time, this is a great thing.

When I first started looking for just such an item, I was prepared to pay up to $30 for it, and I was more than pleasantly surprised that I could get it for less than $3 with no shipping charges.

At this price, I don’t care if it lasts or not, but it appears to be doing well.

The way I found this particular device and this particular company was through a Google search looking for USB sound modules that are compatible with the Linux operating system. This device and company were suggested, and I pretty much ordered on impulse. When something is under $3, there doesn’t have to be all that much thinking involved.

Some components, such as computer memory and hard-disk drives generate a lot of heat and are theoretically more susceptible to failiure. This module is not that kind of component. It generates barely any heat, draws barely any power from the USB input, and I expect that it’ll last indefinitely. If I had to spend $3 every six months, I’d be OK with that, but I can easily see this thing lasting as long as I have this rusty old 2001-era laptop.

And yes, I am using a nine-year-old laptop. Using a Linux operating system, such as Ubuntu, can keep older hardware going for quite some time. This laptop has a 1.3 GHz processor and 1 GB memory. I maxed out the memory, which I recommend everybody do with any “older” computer they still want to use. More memory is the best way to have the best computing experience on any hardware platform and any operating system (Windows, Macintosh or Linux).

The laptop’s touchpad has been dead for as long as the sound chip, and I get around that by using a regular desktop computer mouse that I plug into one of my three USB ports.

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